Hotbed: Bohemian New York and the Secret Club that Sparked Modern Feminism

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The dazzling story of the early feminists who blazed a trail for the movement's most radical ideas. New York City, 1912: at a restaurant in downtown Greenwich Village, a group of women gathered, all with a plan to change the world. This was the first meeting of 'Heterodoxy', a secret social club. Its members were passionate advocates of women's suffrage, labour rights, equal marriage and free love. They were socialites and socialists; reformers and revolutionaries; artists, writers and scientists. Hotbed is the never-before-told story of the club whose audacious ideas and unruly acts transformed an international feminist agenda into a modern way of life. AUTHOR: Joanna Scutts is a literary critic, historian and the author of The Extra Woman. She has written for the New York Times, Washington Post and New Yorker, and created the Paris Review series 'Feminize Your Canon'. Raised in London and educated at Cambridge and Sussex universities, she gained her PhD from Columbia University and lives in New York.

Reviews

Joanna Scutts fascinating secret US club of early twentieth-century feminists An enthralling story of rebellion but also of the power of female friendship Rigorous social history is enlivened by brio and belief throughoutHephzibah Anderson, Observer

Sets out to recover these forgotten activists, women who were engaged in some of the most importantcampaigns of the twentieth century... A series of illuminating vignettes that remind us how far feminism has come over the past century, but also how much remains familiar and yet to be achievedKathryn Hughes, Sunday Times

'[A] lively and absorbing new social history it was only after I readHotbedthat I realized the type of feminist friendship from which I am more directly descended was that of the Heterodites'New York Review of Books

'Incredibly resonant in todays times, and a profound read'Fiona Davis, New York Times-bestselling author of The Lions of Fifth Avenue

'Deeply researched and deftly rendered... a spirited, inspiring history'Lauren Elkin, author of Flneuse

'A transporting tour-de-force of storytelling'Janice P. Nimura, author of The Doctors Blackwell

'Spirit and panache... one for anyone interested in the history of feminism, friendship, or New York City'Ruth Franklin, award-winning author of Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life

'A wonderful tribute to the "restless audacious [and] creative spirit" that pushes a culture beyond convention and complacency and toward something new... fascinating'Maggie Doherty, award-winning author of The Equivalents: A Story of Art, Female Friendship, and Liberation in the 1960s

This enlightening book covers the first ten or so years of the clubs existence. It is also the story of the early feminist movement in the US, and highlights the underacknowledged part that these activist women played in psychology, education, theatre, journalism, anti-lynching legislation and the early-twentieth-century American labour movementAnn Kennedy Smith, Times Literary Supplement

A deeply researched and kinetic historical telling of Heterodoxys fruitful, if also fraught, period, from its inception until the early 1920s. In vibrant prose that summons the idealism and daring of the very existence of Heterodoxy as a center for sisterhood and women-led political thought, Scutts brings to life the stories of women who formed friendships among their ranks, the majority of whom were upper-middle-class authors, journalists, sociologists and artistsWashington Post

'Joanna Scutts hones in on one particularly fascinating corner of this world: the Heterodoxy Club, a coterie of women that included Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Alice Kimball, Alison Turnbull Hopkins, and Susan Glaspell, among other influential figures. Hotbed brings you to the heart of the social world that sustained and supported them, and it is filled with fascinating details for anyone remotely interested in this historyLitHub

Author Bio

Joanna Scuttsis a literary critic, historian and the author ofThe Extra Woman. She has written for theNew York Times,Washington Post and New Yorker, and created theParis Reviewseries 'Feminize Your Canon'. Raised in London and educated at Cambridge and Sussex universities, she gained her PhD from Columbia University and lives in New York.